Story:Rain's Ascent/Chapter 2
"Killing things is not so hard, it’s hurting that’s the hardest part." The sound of bells rings lightly across the dawn. Noa wakes at first slowly, tiredly, then with a violent start, remembering the terror of his fall. With a gasp, he rolls over onto what feels like a ragged blanket. The surface is cold and hard, but flat - an alien feeling to Noa. A few extremely faint beams of light poke cautiously inward through what Noa recognizes as a wall of steel bars. What happened? Where are dad and Cleric Stern?? He feels around in the dark, clinging the blanket to him uncertainly with the palms of both hands, as if it can mediate his prayer. His eyes are unaccustomed to the artificial dark - no stars, no soft firelight. The vanishing specter of his father's likeness suddenly materializes in front of him. Noa shouts with a start, cracking his left side against a wall of stone. "Oww!" The word rings around the walls out through the impassive steel bars. The shadow vanishes - he has just imagined it, conjured it in the grasping dark. Maybe he had wanted it to be real. If it had been real that night... He's doing it again. Crying. Not just from the physical pain in his side, but from the exhaustion of the storm and the confusion of his situation. It's so hard to stop once it starts, and he turns to the only medium that can possibly help. In the dark and fear, it is so easy to curl up and hide in the abyss of one's own faith. "Please help me... Xen... if sometimes I shed tears, it is my greatest joy to hide them well..." The weak light peering in through the bars grows stronger, as if nourished by his words. Noa is too absorbed to notice, clenching his eyes shut. He does not see the twin cell across from him defining itself in the strangely reddening light, or its sole occupant, a young woman with a curtain of long purple hair. She sits demurely on the stone, swallowtail jacket blossoming around her, an island of crepescular color. "…Mau?" “Who’s there?” Noa trembles. The voice is female and non-threatening, but the shadowy cell exacerbates his fear, twisting the syllable into one of intimidation. His hand, grasping behind him, finds an empty case - no crossbow. It probably wouldn't have helped anyway. “Just me. I’m in a cell like you are. So no need to worry,” the voice returns, brighter, no longer a ghost in the dark. As Noa's eyes adjust to his surroundings, he can make out the meager light in the room flowing from three tiny windows: one in his own cell, one in his neighbor's, and one from a door at the end of the hallway. It’s enough to be able to see the speaker, a rather short woman whose brown eyes are barely visible underneath a silver hood... A hood! “You!” It sounds almost accusatory, not the feeling he had in mind. “You’re wearing a hood… did you…?” The sentence drifts off hopefully. She flips it off, revealing a slightly round face framed by straight black hair. “What?” "Last night, or whenever… someone in a hood saved me as I fell… and then I ended up here. I’m so grateful-" “Ummm, no, not me. You were brought in by two men, one of which walked with a quirky shuffling gait, and the other like someone who is trying very hard not to step on another’s toes.” Noa looks at her blankly. He is used to drifting, non-sequitur conversation, but did not expect to find it from the mouth of a person other than his father. “The point is,” she continues, waving her hand airily, “is that I would recognize their feet if they came back. Oh, less importantly, that I didn’t save you from falling. I hate falling. I also don’t have experience with saving people. There are a lot of people in Mindanao who wear hoods, like to fall, and like saving people. Well, their own people.” “Oh… you’re from Mindanao?” Mindanao, the northeast continent, eternally cloaked in mist, isolated from the world. It had delivered the storm unto Noa's family, and now delivered him into the gaze of one of its rarely seen denizens. Wow... a real live Mindanoan... they are all nonbelivers, but... she seems nice...? She points to her hood. “We all wear hoods to shield ourselves from the rain. You don’t get out much, do you? That’s okay, I didn’t either until I ended up here. I’m Riyoku, and I wish we could have met under better circumstances, or not met at all.” Perhaps all Mindanoans are... like this? Noa cracks an absurd smile, born of genuine amusement and bemusement. “Nice to meet you, Riyoku," he offers, sailing above the irony. "I’m Noa… do you know where we are?” “We are in a crudely crafted jail cell awkwardly positioned at the base of Mt. Kailas and occupied by a retreating group of Luzon soldiers who are in the business of Annoying the Priests.” She tilts her head as chanting flows in throw the tiny windows – the daily morning Troparion. “Priests!” Noa exclaims, ungainly switching to a tone of reverence midway through the word. “Perhaps we can convince them to let us go? I’m not sure why I’m here in the first place… I-I mean, I’m very grateful to be alive, but I don’t know where my father and our friend are...” “Neither do I!" she replies, smoothing the trails of her coat as she stands and extracting what appears to be a feather from one of its many recesses. "We'll just have to wait for the soldiers or priests to return. Whichever lesser of two evils." As she turns towards the dawn streaming in from the narrow window slit, it takes on a deep orange sheen. Noa concludes that the birds in Mindanao must be decidedly more exotic than what he is used to, yet not quite as... peculiar as this woman. The few strangers he has encountered in his short, isolated life have all treated him with passing shades of indifference or patronage. He studies her blankly, torn between fixation on his father and the ethereal tug of Riyoku. "Um… sorry." She seems to have mistaken his silence for affront. "I think I know why I’m here, though? This is apparently how one treats Mindanoan ambassadors nowadays. Doesn't even have a decent view..." Her voice trails off as she studies the light, rotating the feather lazily in her hand so lightly it appears to be spinning in space. "Not to mention the company." The basement rings with Riyoku's laughter as Noa catches on, grinning nervously. "Oh god, you thought I was serious? Ohoho... You wouldn't last a second where I'm from..." "What is Mindanao like?" asks Noa hopefully. "Wet," she replies, turning back to the window and frowning. "Although I could do with a little more mist right about now..." “Oh...” They are content to let the conversation, or the frayed kindling of it, drift away. Noa, not having been edified much on the northeastern content, cannot come up with anything more constructive to say and retreats to his interior castle. In the absence of words, the peal of bells is once more distinguishable. Noa hums along absently, knowing each note, though slipping offkey. The sound reassures him of a fictitious happy outcome - this is all some misunderstanding. He is at the foot of the holy mountain! Perhaps they had no more room at the inn, or other lodgings... When I walk out into the morning and find my father, we can pay our respects... Footsteps echo down hallway entrance. The prisoners look up expectantly; Noa in hope, Riyoku in annoyance. “That isn’t either of the people from before," she muses. "I hate meeting new people.” Noa finally stands as well. Who will come to deliver me into the day? Who is the messenger of God, riding on the ring of bells? With a harsh screech, the steel door slams open, and a pair of gigantic pauldrons rushes in - or rather the man behind him. He looks more relieved to see Noa and Riyoku than they are to see him, face reddened with exhaustion and blending into his conflagration of spiked hair. As he opens his mouth to speak, his words are drowned out by a searing roar, echoing wildly around the room and accompanied by a blinding light from the window. "Goddammit," breathes the soldier, the only one still standing after the cacophany. He rushes to Noa's cell, impaling the lock with its key and ripping the door open. "Come on, kid, out!" he shouts at Noa, who has retreated farther into his prison in fear. "Don't make me regret coming down here for you!" The red-haired man turns to Riyoku, but the bars of her cell have already melted into a kaledioscopic ooze on the floor, which she lightly steps over, feather in hand. "About time. Oh, pro tip: be gentle with that one." ---- "I don't understand!" calls Noa breathlessly, scampering out of the basement after the other two. He is exhausted - why is everything happening so fast? He just wants to see someone he knows, so they can wake him up and reassure him it's all a dream. The foyer is a mess of scattered chairs and shattered glasses strewn across nondescript, impoverished stone floors. The red haired man punts a stool out of the way as he strives towards the exit, turning back with a mix of urgency and concern. "We have to catch up with my platoon first. You can understand later. Just keep moving so there can be a later." Schizophrenic skies wreathed in flame and thunderclouds greet the trio as they wrench outside to the base of Mt. Kailas. Shit, how did I get knocked out? What kind of girl turns steel into paint? Where is that owl? And-'' The soldier checks back to make sure his unlikely entourage is still following. The purple-haired woman exits quickly, wraith-like, but the kid is standing dumbstruck in the doorway. ''No time for this. "Hey," the armored man offers, crouching down so he is eye level with Noa. He sets his lantern shield on the ground, trying to appear as minimally intimidating as possible. "I know you're scared right now. You don't know who I am and what we have to do. So, quickly - I'm a soldier here, and that mountain is on the verge of blowing up." He waves towards Mt. Kailas, its peak glowing with the same scarlet flame as his own hair. "My squad is up there, dealing with some bad dudes. You're free to do whatever you want, but I didn't hand you back that crossbow for nothing, and your friend here... well, she melts things. I need you to keep moving - with me, away from this mountain without me, whatever." Noa stares back at him glassily. Why have the bells stopped...? "I'm Bishop. I could use your help." He punches Noa in the arm, with more force than he intended. Anything to get him moving. "Can you do that for me?" The onus of responsibility and slight pain from a gauntlet to the arm seems to stir Noa. "Yes," he whispers, hand drifting to his crossbow in the leather satchel that Bishop had pitched at him a minute before. "I will help you." I will hear the bells ring again. "You're the best, kid," Bishop declares, scooping up his shield and breaking into a run towards the rocky path up Mt. Kailas. "And you," he shouts at Riyoku, who is already keeping pace with him, "I'm guessing that since you didn't turn me into a pile of rainbow mud when I came down to break you out of a cell you had already taken care of, that you're on board with this?" "Sure," she shrugs, the feather now definitely levitating about her hand. "I'm supposed to document interesting things happening in the rest of the world. This is good intro arc material. Also, your hair is amazing and I want to draw it." What the hell? Whatever, I'll take it. "Thanks. Uh, for the hair part too." Mt. Kailas, not to be beaten, roars out another scarlet lava plume, trickling slowly down the slope at a perpendicular angle to their path. "These monks must have great endurance to tolerate such a poorly constructed trail. Or maybe they're just poor?" mentions Riyoku idly as she skips up the steep incline, kicking up dust clouds that lash Noa's face as he coughs out a reply. "To live on Mt. Kailas is a great honor and demands the poorest of spirits." Despite his exhaustion from the night before, the youth ascends the path with determination. To think... I am walking the same road that the ascetics are! It drives him forced with an unearthly energy, and as he catches up with Bishop, the soldier glances at him in surprise. "Hey, uh... we're actually heading into a hostage situation of sorts. It's difficult to tell who's a friendly and who's not. Whatever you've heard about the religious that live here, I'd wipe the slate clean. It's a lot to ask of you, but the only ones you can trust up here are soldiers in the same uniform as me." Noa looks like he is going to freeze in disbelief again; Bishop, prepared, yanks on his arm, forcing him to continue onward. "C'mon kid, you promised me. The time might come where you have to use that crossbow with the intent to kill." The words sounded harsh and ugly in the grit and noise of the volcano's shadow. Dammit. I don't have the time to smooth things over for this kid, even if I want to... Thankfully, Riyoku interjects. "Just treat everyone like they want to kill you, Noa. You have barely any idea who the two of us are and yet you're racing up a mountain on a rescue mission! I think that's fulfilled your 'trusting strangers' quota for the week. Lycoris here broke you out of jail free, and he was probably going to the same to me, but I got impatient. So yeah, he's the boss!" "What the - where you did you get my name?" Bishop huffs, stopping to help the swallowtailed woman up a cliff. A gathering of stone huts lies a small distance away, intermittently illuminated in flashes of fire and bouts of shouting. "It's on your name tag." Riyoku dusts her coat off smartly and peers at their destination. "What are they chanting? Sounds crazy. And religious. Ah, that makes sense." Amid a lapse in Mt. Kailas's outbursts, the intonation rises: "The night! Behold, the night!" A chorus of voices, measured yet zealous, powerful yet precarious, fills the air. As Bishop, Riyoku, and Noa scale the trail, they can see that the chanters all don violent red robes, as if spun from the fires of Mt. Kailas itself. They are huddled, kneeling, in a circle, as if seeking to meld with the very earth itself. "Who cares about the night, I'd be more concerned about the goddamn volcano erupting," whispers Bishop. He beckons Noa and Riyoku to hide behind a rocky outcropping. "Should we trust them?" Noa worries. Bishop casts a critical gaze on the robed group; they are too cloaked for his liking. He wants to see their faces. "I'm not a regular at this place, kid. My squad just got a briefing that there were some hostiles infiltrating the monks that live here. The best thing would be for us to run into one of my comrades, but it doesn't look like we'll be that lucky. Anything you know that could help us out?" The brown-haired boy raises his hands to his chest in consternation. He's never been to the holy mount of Mt. Kailas in his life, even though it is a relatively short 3 hour hike away. "The monks that dwell here are the Iachentum, and devote their lives to strict mortification and guardianship of Mt. Kailas. It is an admirable way-" "I'm sure, but I need more concrete stuff, like, what do they wear, how do they normally treat outsiders, do they generally shout about the night?" Bishop interjects, firmly. His interruption flusters Noa, who twists his fingers together in regret. "I have always been more focused on the virtues and historical figures of the Iachentum", he manages. "The imagery of the night - of the earth and of the soul - is, um, a thing.... oh!.... but... it was my understanding that their traditional garb brown sackcloth. P-perhaps these red vestments are for a special occasion...?" Riyoku scoffs. "The volcano is blowing up, everyone! Switch robes to match! And by the way, Lycoris, why aren't you with any of your soldier buddies? Army of one, hmm? Special prisoner guard squad?" Her feather floats lazily beside her, emitting a wispy trail of ink. His response is irritated but deflated. "Well, yeah. That was my post. I got report from the previous soldier on shift; and then I... I might have fallen asleep, but hey, we'd had a rough night! And weren't you supposed to be on lockdown for..." "THE NIGHT!" shrieks the cloaked cabal, dispersing in a fit of screams as Mt. Kailas unleashes its most vicious conflagration of lava of the morning. Strands of lava streak across the sky, breaking into thousands of searing teardrops. One angles towards the trio, whistling innocently as it hones in to turn them into ash. "Move!" cries Bishop, reaching for the once-again petrified Noa. They are too slow, faces illuminated in fear as the fire hones in. A dendritic shower of deeper orange meets it midair. Their union is both liquid and solid, an efflorescent, expanding blossom of heat and light. Riyoku holds her palm upwards towards the splintering shard of magma, as if inviting it into her feather, the font of the shielding ink. The stray strand of lava sputters out, as if absorbed into the ink. Riyoku cups the feather closer to her, dissipating the orange flower in an instant. As scores of glowing rock crash into the surrounding landscape, she turns towards the other two - Bishop is clutching Noa awkwardly by the shoulder, both staring at her in blank shock surpassing that which Mt. Kailas commanded. "Lockdown for... something like that? Hmph... I hope I've made amends." Main Previous: Chapter 1 Next: Chapter 3